Over the course of more than four decades, he has been a pioneer in the development and application of computational thinking—and has been responsible for many discoveries, inventions and innovations in science, technology and business. He published his first scientific paper at the age of 15, and had received his PhD in theoretical physics from Caltech by the age of Wolfram's early scientific work was mainly in high-energy physics , quantum field theory and cosmology , and included several now-classic results.
Having started to use computers in , Wolfram rapidly became a leader in the emerging field of scientific computing, and in he began the construction of SMP —the first modern computer algebra system—which he released commercially in In recognition of his early work in physics and computing, Wolfram became in the youngest recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship.
Late in Wolfram then set out on an ambitious new direction in science aimed at understanding the origins of complexity in nature. Wolfram's first key idea was to use computer experiments to study the behavior of simple computer programs known as cellular automata. And starting in , this allowed him to make a series of startling discoveries about the origins of complexity. The papers Wolfram published quickly had a major impact, and laid the groundwork for the emerging field that Wolfram called complex systems research.
Through the mids, Wolfram continued his work on complexity, discovering a number of fundamental connections between computation and nature, and inventing such concepts as computational irreducibility. Wolfram's work led to a wide range of applications—and provided the main scientific foundations for such initiatives as complexity theory and artificial life.
Wolfram himself used his ideas to develop a new randomness generation system and a new approach to computational fluid dynamics —both of which are now in widespread use. The rise of computation has been a major world theme for the past 50 years. Our goal is to provide the framework to let computation achieve its full potential in the decades to come: to make it possible to compute whatever can be computed, whenever and wherever it is needed, and to make accessible the full frontiers of the computational universe.
In , building on what is now the Wolfram Language, we introduced Wolfram Alpha —for the first time making large-scale computational knowledge a practical reality and introducing a host of unexpected new technology directions.
Used by millions of people every day on the web, through mobile apps and intelligent assistants and in enterprise deployments, Wolfram Alpha represents one of the most complex and ambitious software projects of all time and a major intellectual and technological achievement. Our organization has been built to focus on long-term goals while consistently delivering the best possible products and services on an ongoing basis.
Led by CEO Stephen Wolfram, we have assembled over the past three decades a team of remarkable breadth and depth, continually attracting outstanding new talent to our uniquely productive intellectual environment. As intellectual pioneers, our organization maintains a deep commitment to communication and education.
Not only are our products used at schools, colleges and universities throughout the world, but we have also developed the world's largest free network of technical and computational websites, and we are defining new curriculum directions as well as offering a variety of innovative student programs—which have served as a rich training ground for future leaders in science and technology. Among the many advances made possible by Wolfram technologies over the past three decades is Stephen Wolfram's own groundbreaking book A New Kind of Science , which defines a sweeping new direction for computation and basic science and has had an increasingly profound effect in science, technology and the arts—as well as seeding many important Wolfram technology innovations, especially in Wolfram Alpha.
Our strategy as an organization is to maintain a portfolio of development, from continually strengthening our core algorithms and knowledgebase, to supporting the latest computing and deployment architectures, to developing major new concepts and capabilities—and consistently delivering the results in the form of products, services and experimental initiatives that make breakthrough technology accessible to the broadest possible spectrum of people and organizations.
In our focus on long-term objectives, we have chosen to remain a closely held private group of companies, and our consistent business success has allowed us to build a strong organization capable of pursuing a broad range of research and development. With a tightly knit but geographically distributed group of over seven hundred employees, we are able to take a unified approach to a remarkable range of interdisciplinary projects, efficiently developing major innovations and quickly implementing them in our products.
Try making your query the minimum number of words needed to communicate. Try different words or notations. And be sure to check your spelling.
Just use the feedback form on the bottom of every results page. You can also have discussions on the Wolfram Alpha group on Wolfram Community. Wolfram Alpha works by taking free-form linguistic input, so there's no need for a manual as such.
Check out the Examples by Topic page to get a sense of what Wolfram Alpha can do. Use as few words as possible to communicate. Use unambiguous whole words. Just describe what you're interested in; you don't need to explicitly ask a question. For more guidance, take a look at the Examples By Topic page. It ranks possible interpretations, gives results for the one it thinks is most plausible and gives links to click to get other ones.
It often uses your location to rank interpretations—say, favoring cities that are near you. Pretty much anything you could put into the main Wolfram Alpha input field. For instance, if you're asked for a density, you can either give an explicit number or a response like "water".
Usually, but not necessarily. In addition, Wolfram Alpha is continually being updated and enhanced. The location it deduces should be correct to within about five miles. You can also set a specific location in the "Preferences" tab of the user drop-down menu in the top-right corner of Wolfram Alpha pages. Wolfram Alpha deduces your location from your IP address. If you are using a VPN, satellite internet or some other complex form of network, you may have to correct your location explicitly by including it in your input or by setting a specific location in the "Preferences" tab of the user drop-down menu in the top-right corner of Wolfram Alpha pages.
Wolfram Alpha should automatically know your approximate location from GeoIP. If for some reason it does not, you can include a city or latitude, longitude specification in your input. Yes, we have a Japanese version available at ja. With a Wolfram Alpha Pro subscription and the free Wolfram Player plugin , you can get dynamic versions of existing Wolfram Alpha output with interactive controls, 3D rotation, animation and much more. For a list of supported download formats, see the Data Download Samples page.
All you need to use Wolfram Alpha is web connectivity and a modern web browser with JavaScript. Supported browsers include the latest versions of Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Edge. Wolfram Alpha often makes use of the latest web technologies, and we strongly recommend using the most up-to-date version of your preferred browser. You can access Wolfram Alpha through one of our mobile apps or use wolframalpha.
Wolfram Alpha is a web-based service that runs on a large centralized compute cluster. For organizations, see our Business Solutions page and learn how to add Wolfram Alpha to your internal infrastructure. Signed-in users may set preferences such as unit system, currency, time zone, output text size and similar. If you're unable to sign in, you may be able to use your browser's magnification tools to adjust your view of Wolfram Alpha.
Hover over any result pod or click the gear icon and a small toolbar will appear in the bottom-left corner. Click the icon for a plain text version of that result pod. Select and copy the text as you would any other text on the web. Wolfram Alpha is not a directory; it computes answers on the fly. Results will be recomputed using your current time and location when visiting a bookmarked Wolfram Alpha result URL. If your browser can handle a special character, Wolfram Alpha will be able to as well.
However, Wolfram Alpha currently only understands questions in English or Japanese on ja. You also have access to an onscreen extended keyboard, allowing you to input additional symbols to give your formulas correct technical formatting.
The keyboard includes all common Greek characters and a curated collection of other special characters. Wolfram Alpha knows only what your browser transmits to the web server—primarily your IP address, from which Wolfram Alpha deduces your approximate geographic location. Note that this information is protected by our Privacy Policy. There are a few options. Depending on the result, the "Copyable plaintext" dialog may contain pre-formatted code you can use directly in any Wolfram Language interface.
You can also use the "Open code" feature to interact with results in the Wolfram Cloud. Wolfram Alpha generates sounds in MIDI format, which may require a plugin for certain browser configurations. Eventually you should be able to ask it about essentially any kind of systematic factual knowledge. You can get an idea of what it covers today by looking at the Examples. You can track its progress through the Wolfram Blog and the Wolfram Community.
The easiest thing to do is just to try a simple case of it. You can also browse the Examples by Topic page, or ask on Wolfram Community. It can only know things that are known, and are somehow public. It only deals with facts, not opinions. It limits the computation time for each query. And, of course, it's in continual development—and always will be. We've first emphasized areas where computation or mathematics have traditionally had a more significant role, or where knowledge is more readily quantitative.
But we're steadily working through all the content areas covered by reference libraries, handbooks and much more. Pretty much anything that's possible using today's best algorithms—subject only to the constraint that the computations must complete in the time Wolfram Alpha has available.
Yes, absolutely. It has access to all of the Wolfram Language's algorithms, which cover algebra, calculus, geometry, number theory, discrete math and much more. It covers much that isn't in such books, as well. And because Wolfram Alpha performs real-time computations rather than simply looking up data, it can always derive new results. Yes, fairly thoroughly. And it's not just able to look up tabulated values, but also to compute from empirical formulas and so on, and to use such results as inputs to other computations.
For data that's systematically available internationally, its coverage is quite broad. There's more to do on data that's specific to particular countries. Pretty much everything that's available, going back more than a century in some places. And it's constantly getting new real-time data.
Basic computable information about well-known people, such as birth and death dates, government positions, major awards, etc. More data and connections are being added. Basics, particularly about more computable issues, such as movie box-office grosses. More is being added. Most likely because we haven't gotten to it yet. Feel free to contact us with contributions or suggestions of data that we should include. It comes from Wolfram Alpha's internal knowledgebase.
Some of the data in that knowledgebase is derived from official public or private websites, but most of it is from more systematic primary sources. Many different sources, combined and curated by the Wolfram Alpha team.
At the bottom of each relevant results page there's a "Sources" button, which provides background sources and references. Most of the data in Wolfram Alpha is derived by computations, often based on multiple sources. A list of background sources and references is available via the "Sources" button at the bottom of relevant Wolfram Alpha results pages.
We use a portfolio of automated and manual methods, including statistics, visualization, source cross-checking and expert review. With trillions of pieces of data, it's inevitable that there are still errors out there.
Many kinds of data—such as financial or weather—stream in all the time. Other kinds of data are updated when they become available, on a daily, weekly, monthly or yearly basis. Tell us!
We're always working hard to perfect the quality of our data. You can use individual pieces of data however you want. There are, however, restrictions on aggregate uses, as described in the Terms of Use. Please contact us if you're wondering about a particular use.
Although we must rely on external sources for many kinds of raw data, we curate all data and our goal is to make sure that it is perfect. Wolfram Alpha effectively checks real-time data such as weather, earthquakes, market prices, etc. If an unexpected deviation is found, Wolfram Alpha will normally indicate it, for example by showing lines as dashed.
Most of the data comes directly from primary sources. However, Wikipedia contains excellent "folk information" about everyday practices in many domains, about the popularity and names of things such as "the big apple" for NYC, and so on. Wolfram Alpha uses such information especially for linguistic disambiguation. Any level, from kindergarten to graduate school and beyond. On the elementary end, Wolfram Alpha can do arithmetic showing steps, make clocks, work with colors and so on.
Check to see if your book's answer appears under "Alternate forms". It's pretty common for some forms to look different but be effectively equivalent. The citable author is Wolfram Alpha. You can reference results in individual pods by giving their names. See standard citation elements for Wolfram Alpha for specific elements and an example. Wolfram Alpha should be considered the source, just as an encyclopedia or other reference would be.
If you include the Wolfram Alpha URL in your document, your readers can go to the "Sources" button to get further references. Note that Wolfram Alpha often combines and adapts data from multiple sources. Yes, the content is reviewed by domain experts. It is also extensively validated using automated testing.
For external data, we strive to use the most reliable sources available. Elementary math results often have "Step-by-step solution" buttons, and combinations of data have "Details" buttons.
You can embed interactive Wolfram Alpha Widgets onto your blog or website or use the APIs to integrate Wolfram Alpha's results directly in your web application. You can incorporate results from Wolfram Alpha queries directly into your web, mobile and desktop applications with the Wolfram Alpha API.
Wolfram Alpha can be accessed directly from any Wolfram Language interface. Learn more about this functionality at the Wolfram Alpha Integration guide page. Most small pieces of Wolfram Language code will work in Wolfram Alpha. In most cases, you can mix the Wolfram Language code with pseudocode and math. Wolfram Alpha represents the first deployment of a new kind of computing technology. Many different products and services are developing from Wolfram Alpha and its technology.
There are many potential opportunities, particularly around the Wolfram Alpha API , distribution channels and data curation. We intend to encourage the best possible business ecosystem around Wolfram Alpha. Wolfram Research is the privately held company that has been developing Mathematica and the Wolfram Language since Wolfram Alpha LLC is a private company with no outside investors.
There are likely to be corporate investment opportunities in other Wolfram Alpha-related businesses. Contact us for information. Wolfram Alpha is always looking for exceptional technical, content and business talent.
Learn more at the Wolfram Careers page. There are many parts to it, each with significant innovations. Four key general areas are the data curation pipeline, the algorithmic computation system, the linguistic processing system and the automated presentation system.
It's currently more than 10 million lines of symbolic Wolfram Language code, together with many terabytes of data. Wolfram Alpha uses a modular server architecture, similar to many modern supercomputers. Scaling to accommodate more requests simply requires having more modules. Running Wolfram Alpha requires large-scale infrastructure.
Custom Wolfram Alpha solutions are available for large organizations. User behavior gives excellent clues about linguistics, which we incorporate into Wolfram Alpha. The Wolfram Language. Without the Wolfram Language's high-level symbolic programming and huge base of built-in algorithms, Wolfram Alpha simply wouldn't have been possible.
Its server technology is based on Apache Web servers accessing clusters of webMathematica servers. In effect it has a dynamic algorithmic version of an ontology, implemented using symbolic programming. Search engines give you links to pages that exist on the web. Wolfram Alpha computes answers to specific questions using its built-in knowledgebase and algorithms. Wikipedia gives you pages of narrative about topics. Wolfram Alpha computes answers to specific questions you ask, just giving facts, not narrative.
Wolfram Alpha often includes sidebar links to Wikipedia. In concept, perhaps Leibniz's characteristica universalis from the late s—or the science-fiction computers of the s. Technologically, many pieces of Wolfram Alpha have precursors, but the ambitious scope of the whole project is believed to be unique.
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